Persistent Memory

10/29/24--Wisconsin

After the incident with the talking board, we have a quiet night. The following morning the train pulls into the station in Cedar Rapids, Iowas.

There are no telegrams awaiting us.

Clara contacts her answering service. A few mundane messages from Morningside. Then there’s a message from Eugene about Butler…they’ve checked him out of the insane asylum…everything’s fine. Will catch up soon. All attempts to contact Eugene are fruitless.

We get back on the train…three hours later, we’re in Madison, Wisconsin. Clara checks for messages again… there’s one from the insane asylum requesting clearance to transfer a patient. There’s another message from Morningside asking about transport of Butler.

Clara calls Morningside…her coworker answers…Clara promises to get the Butler thing resolved. She then calls the Oregon Insane Asylum and spends a frustrating 20 minutes being bounced around before giving up and hanging up.

We leave the train in Wassau. We have another quiet evening in a hotel.

October 30th—-
We drive to Cambridge Grove Comvalescence Institution.

The place is a mess. Roof is collapsing in spots, shutters are missing; clearly this is less of a place of treatment than a dumping spot for unwanted people.

Clara talks to the nurse, who IDs her and then tells us that Marian Ramsay has never had a visitor in the 25 years she’s been a patient. An orderly takes us to see Marian, who is housed in the Hopeless Ward.

Marian is catatonic. She is well cared for from the look of things, although she looks much older than her years. She’s in her late 50s, but her hair is stark white, she is frail, withered, and stooped over. She sits by the window with a faded afghan across her lap.

Clara requests his file. While the orderly is fetching it, our Marion starts talking to Marian, explaining what has happened to us. She feels the other Marian’s hand tighten on her own, as if in reaction to her words.

Eight doctors have attended her with no success. The file states that when she was first brought in she was shrieking about the murder, screaming for her sons and ranting about the worm and the cellar.

Suddenly Marian hisses “Big as a house. I heard the worms. The blood wasn’t my sons’, it was the worms’!!!” She’s extremely agitated.

The orderly sees this and is gobsmacked. He brings back the doctor, who examines Marian.

We discuss what happened with the doctor. She and Clara swap business cards. She also asks if the hospital is privately funded. The doctor makes a jibe about them barely being funded at all, and Marion writes a sizable check to cover Mrs. Ramsey’s care.

We then board a train to Green Bay and then drive to Big Bay. We find Bertram Chambers, the attorney caring for the estate. He’s slimy…at first he thinks we’re trying to collect on the rent that was paid for Stuart from Oregon. We get the key from him.

We stop in Marquette and pick up supplies…surgical masks…flashlight batteries.

We then go to the Martensen house. It is now Halloween!

The house stands alone at least a mile and a half from the nearest neighbor. Paint is peeling off but windows and doors are in good repair. A wooden fence surrounds the property. There’s a window in the foundation.

Marion performs a protection spell on the house while the rest of us stand on the porch. She almost falls in a hole that was boarded over. The wood is pretty weathered. We pull it back to look…there are bones. Lots of them. A femur and a jawbone are clearly visible.

We decide to go down the hole to investigate. Douglas volunteers. He finds even more bones in the hole than we had reckoned when we first looked. Some of the bones are small (toddler-sized). Also there are animal bones.

October 25th (Saturday)

Clara goes in to work. Dr Harp has left her a note regarding the chemicals being administered to Butler. The compound seems to be Scopolamine, which is typically a sedative used for childbirth. The note references some research by Robert House out of Dallas, TX, regarding effects…nothing conclusive. Harp promises to keep digging for more information.

Douglas goes to the paper to see if he can sweet-talk his editor into paying for him to go to Wisconsin (to investigate Stuart’s last days).

His editor is less than enthusiastic, but cuts a deal with Douglas, if the article is a flop, Douglas will have to pay all his travel expenses back, and if he writes a winner, they’ll call it even.

Troy gets the house ready for our departure and winterizes it. He also calls the newspaper, milkman, and post office to stop deliveries.

Marion has her date with Margaret. She gets dropped off at the house as the rest of us are sitting down to dinner. She breezes in…looks at us all and tells us it’s none of our business, then proceeds to tell us that they went to the library. Research on the region turned up evidence of prehistoric copper mines in the Upper Peninsula, but that the native tribes didn’t appear to do much copper work.

Besides the alchemical properties of copper, Marion thinks that maybe the tunnels are the point….like the dolmen/gateways with their tunnels.

She mentions that as she and Margaret were headed up Germantown Road, they passed a motorcycle coming in the other direction….she found it suspicious because the road isn’t terribly busy, and she thinks it might be the same one that pulled out after the police and M.E. left the night of Stuart’s death.

The next day, Douglas is the last to rise. It rained during the night…now it’s sunny. We eat a quick breakfast, clean up, and get things tidied up, then head to the train station for the long trip to Wisconsin.

October 28 (Tuesday)

One evening as we’re sitting in the dining car, Troy turns to Doug and asks him if he remembers him. Troy had a dream that he was on a battlefield in France…mortars were going off everywhere. He looked back and saw soldiers frozen in terror; he accidentally stabbed someone in the arm with a bayonet. A mortar went off, knocking Troy back. He looked around and saw Douglas’ face, and lots of blood.

He asks Douglas if he has a scar on his arm from the bayonet.

Douglas replies that he had a dream where Troy pinned his arm to a tree with a bayonet.

As the two men are talking, Clara looks at the table. there’s a glass of ‘water’ that had contained olives on a toothpick…all that’s left is the toothpick, which now rests atop a menu. During the conversation, the toothpick rolls around on the menu in a way that isn’t congruent with the motion of the train.

She thinks of the talking board…the word “before” is discernible. The toothpicks stops suddenly and rolls of the table.

Marion and Clara discuss what happened…they decide to make a paper ouija board and planchette to see if they can contact the spirit.

We all head to the sleeper car. We ask questions…nothing happens until Clara asks if the spirit is her mother…then there’s a twitch. Douglas asks if we’re heading in the right direction and the cup spells out “from before.”

When Douglas asks for clarification, Troy turns to him and says “I died the first time because of you. I came back to make sure that doesn’t happen this time.” He then tips over backwards, landing heavily on his back. We check on him….he regains consciousness with no recollection of his episode.

Douglas thinks of the weird, mummified hand…the one that looks like his own left hand.

All further questions yield no answers, so we give up and go back to the dining car.

Marion thinks that because the talking board at home is dedicated to its specific purpose, it is more accurate and effective that the makeshift paper board we tried to use. She decides to make a proper board.

Clara’s dreams that night are muddled and murky….she awakens at 2:17 AM, just as the train is pulling into Lincoln, Nebraska. She vaguely recalls it as being the same one she had before about the chess game…and also about Gatineau’s bizarre letter to her and Marion…the one about the sleeper beneath the sea and the stars realigning.

At the next stop, we go to a store in town and pick up the supplies to make the new talking board. It’s expensive because Marion wants it to be as good as possible…we even purchase real silver wire for it.

When we board the train again, a porter tells Douglas there’s a telegram for him. Douglas tips him and reads the message, which was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska’s station from Portland:

Fear it may be checkmate in a few moves STOP
Suggest keeping sunset to your back for a while STOP
May have a feint or two left STOP
Steward en passant STOP
Signed, Mad Hatter

We figure that the Mad Hatter is Milner. Troy figures out that Steward is synonymous with Butler. Clara sends a hasty telegram back to ask if Butler is okay, and that we’ll be in Des Moines and then Madison.

Marion constructs the talking board. She asks for blood from them all to use. She is very apologetic about this, given her own experience at the hospital.

We stop in Des Moines. The talking board is ready, but we decide not to use it right away since we need to change trains. No telegram awaits us..it’s only been six hours since we left Lincoln, so this isn’t surprising.

The train to Madison is smaller and less well-appointed, but we settle in quickly and Marion brings out the board.

We gather that we’re speaking to Douglas’ Paternal grandmother (Dorothy). We try to get her to explain what she was trying to tell us before. She finally responds positively when Clara asks if she had anything to do with the dream about the chess game. She also answers in the affirmative that she had something to do with Troy’s episode. After many questions, we glean that she is trying to help us resolve things…that she wants us to join her…when Douglas asks her where, she says outside…what word…out…more…be…us.

Douglas makes the leap to Mobius strip, which calls to mind the piece of paper that had been hanging from the door handle in the alternate Morningside (memory lane).

We try to find out who the new spirit is (since it pretty clearly isn’t Dorothy). It responds by sending the planchette (which is shaped like a wooden triangle) hurtling off the board and straight at Douglas’ throat. Luckily it isn’t sharp enough to cut him, but it still hits him pretty hard.

Douglas brings his left hand up to his throat and the planchette flies at him again, smacking into his wrist.

Clara reaches for it, and it hits the floor. Douglas keels over backwards (much as Troy had done). Marion tells the spirit that we’re done, and releases it.

Troy stamps his foot down on the planchette. The board starts clattering on the table. Marion clamps it down.

Clara checks on Douglas. He comes to. His throat is burning and it hurts to breathe, but he is otherwise unharmed.

Marion is furious because Edmund means he has her blood. The thought is that Edmund believed magical ability runs in families and he’s trying to create another “family member” from her or Douglas’ blood or (in her case) reproductive organs (the whole thing with the ovary removal).

After the police had left with the remains of Stuart David Cabot Jenkins, we sat back down and tried to finish our long-cold dinner. We stayed up for a while, checking for signs of the parasites inside the house, and talking about the situation.

We finally retired late. Troy and Douglas slept well, but Marion and Clara had a restless night, and awakened early, unrefreshed.

We got an early start, deciding to check Stuart’s room at the Hotel Gibson for more clues about why he was trying to reach Douglas. It’s raining…Marion stashed her scythes under her raincoat, confident that they would go unnoticed.

We arrived at the Hotel without incident. The attendant acknowledged us but didn’t attempt to speak with us, so we headed to room 206.

We knocked first, and when there was no answer, we tried the door. It was locked. We used the key that we had found in Stuart’s pocket and let ourselves in. Troy placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of the door, closed it, and locked it so that we could look around without any surprise interruptions.

The room was fairly tidy. The bed had been slept on, but not in…the comforter and sheets were still pulled up, but rumpled. There were some articles of clothing scattered about.

Clara looked closer at the bed. She noticed some trails of dried mucus on the pillow, which made her think of the horrible way in which Stuart had died. Apparently in his sleep, some of the viscous matter from the parasites had trickled from his nose and mouth.

Troy saw a scuffed and battered suitcase on the floor. Inside was a thick journal/notebook. There was also a .38 Smith & Wesson along with an unopened box of shells. Troy checked the chamber, confirming that the gun didn’t appear to have ever been fired. Troy took the gun and shells to add to our arsenal.

Douglas read the journal. It contained notes from interviews, some in shorthand (which Douglas was able to read). The journal was about 3/4 full.

Douglas passed the journal around to the rest of us:

Clara noticed that the handwriting became noticeably worse…a quick perusal showed that the notes became less coherent towards the end as well. (Pertinent information on handout—please refer to that for detail)

Marion caught the name Hiram Crewe and recognized him as having been a psychic investigator who had basically dropped from public view about a decade before…the name popped up in the journal shortly before Stuart’s notes started to become jumbled and disjointed.

We kept the journal.

One of the pieces of clothing in the room was a coat that had been draped over the back of a couch. In the pocket was a receipt for a Western Union Wire Transfer from Forest Grove, OR to Marquette, MI in the amount of $250.00. Douglas recognized Marquette as being located on the Upper Peninsula. We deduced that the wire probably accounted for the sequential bank notes that Troy and Douglas had found in Stuart’s wallet (20 $10.00 bills).

We decided we needed to find out who L Morrow was, and also find out more about Stuart Cabot Jenkins and Hiram Crewe.

Douglas headed to the newspaper office while the rest of us tracked down the cabbie who had dropped Stuart off at our house.

We were able to locate and speak to the cabbie, but he didn’t have anything enlightening to share: he stated that he had been unnerved by Stuart’s appearance and behavior, that he had offered to take Stuart to a hospital, but that Stuart had insisted on going to our residence.
Stuart hadn’t left anything in the cab, either.

We then decided to go to the library.

In the meantime, Douglas was at the newspaper office, following a different tack. He contacted a paper in Green Bay. They knew Stuart as a free-lance journalist who had worked for their publication from time to time and had also contributed articles about supernatural and paranormal subjects to tabloids that dealt in that kind of thing; they also stated that Stuart usually played it as a skeptic, being the type to debunk hoaxes or find natural explanations for eerie occurrences.

He also asked about Crewe…the person at the paper recognized him, and said that Stuart had not been a fan of Crewe.

While at the library, Marion decided to call Margaret in Seattle and see if she had any information to share regarding Crewe, Stuart, or the publications to which Stuart contributed.

Margaret was delighted to hear from Marion. She remembered Crewe’s reputation. She also recognized Stuart and stated that he was a regular contributor to the Journal of Scientific Exploration and The Anomalist, among others. She mentioned that she had some copies of those magazines if Marion would like to borrow them.

Marion told her what had happened to Stuart. Margaret was understandably shocked, and believed Stuart’s death to be the result of a curse.

The two women made plans (a date) for the next day and Margaret promised to bring all the publications she had with articles by Stuart, as well as some Scotch.

Meanwhile, Douglas looked into L Morrow. He turned up an article about a Mayoral Election that took place several years ago. One of the speakers at the victory dinner was a Professor Lester Morrow of Pacific University in Forest Grove. Douglas found out that Morrow was a professor of Statistical Mechanics (Physics), and a veteran of the Great War. Douglas located a photograph of Morrow in a periodical from Pacific University. He had a round face, with a forced smile, and a fringe of hair surrounding a bald pate (like Friar Tuck, only less jovial). From the way Professor Morrow’s left shoulder appeared, Douglas deduced that he was missing that arm. Morrow’s age was hard to determine.

One of the things Marion was able to glean from Stuart’s writing was that the King in Yellow was an avatar for a god. Which one was unspecified, and Marion decided to look into it later.

We met back up and shared our findings, then decided to make a day trip to Forest Grove so that we could meet Professor Morrow and hopefully find out why Stuart was trying so hard to get to Douglas.

The trip down was uneventful. We stopped at the Silver Twilight Lodge. There wasn’t anything happening. We saw a sign for a presentation by Professor Graham to be given the next night. There was a 50-something woman in the common room, reading a book. Otherwise the place was empty. We went upstairs to show Marion the mural, but the doors to the room were locked.

We then moved on to the university. We located Professor Morrow, who was wrapping up a lecture to a class of about 40 students. We couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

When the students had all filed out, we spoke to Professor Morrow. He recognized Douglas. He also knew our names through “The Group.” -Silver Twilight.

He told us that he and Stuart had come from the same area, but hadn’t known each other until they were shipped out of Troy, Michigan to serve as marines in Russia during the Great War.

We then broke the news to him about Stuart’s death. He was shocked. Explained he had advised Stuart to meet up with Douglas after he had read Douglas’ articles about New Mexico and Skookum Lake.

He had expected Stuart to come see him first, though, as he had wired the money to Stuart for his travel expenses.

We showed him the journal. He read through it with a somewhat flat affect. We were a little surprised that he didn’t react more to what he read, but felt that this might be because his experiences in the war had perhaps desensitized him.

We discussed it with him for a little while. We had all come to the same hypothesis that Stuart had been infected with the parasite while staying at the Martensen house, most likely when he had been unconscious in the cellar.

After more discussion, we left Professor Morrow and headed back to Portland.

October 23rd,1924 (Thursday)

The following things have happened since our return to Portland a little over a month ago:

While Steve/Roger has healed physically from the wounds he received during his abduction, it has become painfully obvious that he will never be able to live a normal life. The demands of caring for him are more than we can manage, especially when it becomes clear that he can’t be left unsupervised. The decision is made to have him committed to the Oregon State Insane Asylum.

Douglas writes an article about the goings-on at Skookum Lake. Where his article about New Mexico had garnered him some positive professional notoriety, this latest story tarnishes his reputation, branding him as a sensationalist. There are complaints that if he wants to write fiction, he shouldn’t be a journalist.

Marian reads the Mase-Howe Illuminations. She finds that the publication concerns a cairn in Orkney that dates back to 3000 BC, making it one of the oldest of its kind. The author claims that the cairn is older than that, and that it actually was built around an older stone structure. Marion believes this internal structure to be a dolmen similar to the one at Skookum Lake. The author’s theory is that the dolmen (not his words) is a symbolic gateway to the afterlife. Marian is fairly certain that the dolmens serve as a means of traveling between each other (the next logical step being that this was how the other Marian managed to transport us from Skookum Lake to the Portland sewer, with the thought being that there is a dolmen down in the sewer). She also believes that the Orkney dolmen isn’t functioning.

Clara ponders the identities of the corpses we found in the sewer. Research into the missing persons reports turns up one person that we feel confident is a match for the older woman. Neighbors interviewed during the investigation didn’t seem to be too broken up at the prospect of Athena Boggs being gone. She was a notoriously cantankerous woman, possibly due to her terrible arthritis. When she disappeared, the police were quick to look to her husband as the prime suspect, as the Boggs’ marriage had been unhappy, with a history of alcoholism and domestic violence. Mr. Boggs was cleared when it came to light that she went missing while he was at work.

Now:
As Halloween draws near, decorations start going up all over town. The scraps of fabric that hang from lampposts, flickering light creating the impression of ghostly eyes…these things hold no charm for us any more. Aunt Eugenia’s house is bare of any such trappings. There are no carved pumpkins on the porch like there are on everyone else’s porches.

Detective Butler’s friend calls one evening, upset about the weird treatments and new medication that Butler’s new physician is prescribing, and telling us that he has been told to leave because he kicked up a stink about it. He tells Clara that the new doctors name is Malachi Blenning. He also says that he snagged some records as well as one of the medication vials that Dr Blenning was administering. It is NA Tetrahydropyramidine, Vol AUBA1923D. Clara is unfamiliar with it, and the chemical compound doesn’t sound complete to her…she believes it must be a barbiturate of some sort. She and the friend discuss getting a POA for Butler since he has no family and clearly needs someone who can intervene in a legal capacity to stop the treatment and possibly get Butler moved to Morningside. The friend feels (as does Clara) that Butler should be more progressed in his recovery and they both feel that the treatments are causing more problems.

After the friend rings off, Clara contacts Dr Harp at Morningside to ask him if he recognizes the medication. He doesn’t either, and comes to a similar conclusion regarding its usage and composition. He recognizes Dr Blenning’s name, though, stating that he is a respected psychoanalyst. Clara hangs up feeling even more perplexed and worried than she had before the conversation.

During dinner, we hear a car pull up out front. Douglas and Clara look out the window..a man can be seen shuffling towards the house from a yellow cab. The cab driver attempts to assist him, but he waves the driver off violently. The cabby shakes his head, gets back in the cab, and drives off.

Clara flips on the porch light and opens the door, with Douglas standing beside her, holding his service pistol. Troy is by the window with his shotgun. Behind them, Marian sits at the table, eating her chicken…she reaches down and uncovers one of the scythes that she always keeps near these days. It’s glowing.

In the glare of the porch-light, the man appears to be in his late 20s, with sandy blonde hair and glasses. Although sturdily built, he is pale as though ill, and he has at least a week’s worth of beard growth. His clothes, which were probably respectable and of decent quality, look disheveled and thrown-together.

He holds up a rain-sodden scrap of paper.

“I have this address. I was sent here. I’m looking for Mr. Ryder.”

“Who are you?”

“Stuart.”

“Who sent you?”

“Murrow—-he sent me.” The name doesn’t ring a bell.

“You have to get to the house and stop it.” He says this…then he says “I’ve come from Green Bay. I’m not gonna make it.” He leans against the porch post.

As he slumps down, Clara steps forward to check his pulse….her fingers sink into his neck as though it were a rotten piece of fruit. She jerks her hand back instinctively…there are small, white, insectile, maggot things on her fingers…she shakes them off in horror.

The front of the man’s body starts to open slowly, like it’s being unzipped from the inside. The white creatures pour out of the empty husk that used to be Stuart.

Douglas and Clara retreat into the house, slamming the door.

A few of the creatures have gotten into the house. Douglas catches a couple in a Mason jar, and Marian stomps on one. They crawl up the windows, leaving trails of slimy footprints in their wake.

Marian gets a fumigator and starts spraying at the creatures with it, and we throw some meat out in the yard to see if it attracts them, but it doesn’t.

Troy decides to search Stuart’s body for clues, and Douglas assists him. They find the piece of paper, but it’s so wet that it’s illegible. Stuart doesn’t wear a wedding band. His wristwatch is of decent quality and as unremarkable as everything else about Stuart (except his death). The wallet contains a Green Bay drivers license for Stuart David Cabot Jenkins. The name means nothing to us. The wallet also contains $200.00 in sequentially numbered $10.00 bills. There is also a room key for the Hotel Gibson. Troy puts the money and license back in the wallet, but we retain the key.

We call the police, who show up with the medical examiner, as is protocol. There are lots of questions. It doesn’t escape the notice of Portland’s finest that we seem to be constantly finding hollowed-out corpses of one kind or another, but the connection with Butler works its usual magic and they leave us alone. Before the examiner leaves, Douglas hands him the jar of parasites as a parting gift.

It’s wet, smelly, and pitch black; Clara stumbles, tripping over something. Marion produces her lighter so we can see. We are in the midst of seven corpses. They are arranged like the spokes of a wheel, heads inward. There are symbols painted on the concrete-patched stone floor, three per body. There is a spiral painted on the ceiling, the center of which is aligned with the center of the corpse-wheel.

Marion studies the symbols. She identifies them as being associated with Yog Sothoth. She concludes that these people’s bodies are an offering…the circle would allow the summoned creature to leave. She alters the symbols so that nothing can leave the space.

Clara investigates the bodies. There are six men and one woman. All adult. The woman appears to be older than the men; judging by her swollen joints, she appears to be in her late 50s to early 60s. Even though they’re nearly skeletal, they appear to have been dead for less than a month. They’ve been gnawed on—most of the bite marks appear to be from rodents, although some are larger, and the thigh-bones have been fractured…something has tried to suck out the marrow.

A hollow, clanking, whistling sound like bamboo wind chimes can be heard coming from an opening.

Douglas moves towards the opening to find the source of the sound. It peters out and then stops completely.

There’s a 3-foot ledge and then a 5-foot high tunnel that runs about 20 feet…we can hear water now.

We follow the tunnel…bones hang from the ceiling—they’ve been gnawed just like the corpses in the room behind us.

A man screams “CLARA”

The terrible, hollow fluting sounds start again.

We follow another tunnel and drop off. The tunnels are now bare stone (older than the section we were previously in)…it appears to be a disused sewer line.

Besides the stench of sewage, we smell kerosene.

We end up in another room. Against one wall is a crate. Above it is an empty frame. Painted on the wall inside the frame is a silhouette of a person, depicted in mud, blood, slime, and fecal matter. This appears to be an altar…there are books and candles laid out on the crate.

There is movement from the tunnel to our right: a bone comes out…filled with chewed out holes.

We manage to defeat it, although Douglas gets hurt in the process. Marion takes some of the books from the crate, notably The Mase Howe Illuminations-1811 (a British book), and the Lenge Inscriptions, which are hand-bound and written in a combination of Cyrillic and English.

We hear a voice calling “CLARA…..DOUGLAS” and follow it.

The tunnel slopes up. We crawl up it…Clara, followed by Douglas, then Troy, then Marion.

At the top is a grate. Through it, we can hear two men talking. They are clearly discussing Steve/Roger.

One of the two men leaves the room (goes upstairs). The other man occupies himself by torturing Steve/Roger. We use the opportunity to push the grate out and crawl into the room.

Taking him by surprise, we tie the man up. We attempt to question him. He isn’t very forthcoming…in spite of our threats, he is pretty cocky, but he does give his name as Steve Alberts, and says he works for Chalmers Wright, Accountant, Gambler (and gambling-circle runner). He is connected to Patterson.

Clara runs out of patience with Steve Alberts’ impertinence and pistol-whips him.

The other fellow comes down the stairs, where Troy has been hiding in wait. Troy takes care of him.

Steve/Roger appears to be in better shape than we had expected; although his fingers are broken, he still has all of them. We attend to the worst of his wounds and get him out of there.

The three remaining heroes stand by a cabin in the middle of nowhere, while eldritch sounds emanate from the woods around them. On the hillside beside them, a man named Stanley Mulligan waves a firearm around, while strange creatures in sunglasses who used to be men watch them.

At a loss for what to do next, Clara asks: What do you want from us? One of the creatures answers: Nothing.
Troy asks: What do you want from Stanley? The answer: He had knowledge of the site.
Clara: What are you? A: We have been called the Great Race by your kind. We understand that time as you know it may be…short. We will make you a deal.
Troy: what kind of deal? A: Safe passage as well as your friend (Marion) if you don’t molest this area any further.

At this, Stanley looks around as if to say “what have you done?” to the creatures.

Clara asks the creature what will happen to Stanley and it tells her that it is likely he’ll attempt to hide out in Seattle but that he’ll be found in 3-4 years.

Douglas asks why Patterson is looking for Stanley. The question elicits a strong reaction from Stanley, who asks the creature if he “let that guy free.” The answer, of course, is yes.

Behind Stanley, the bushes part to reveal the man from the dolmen…his tentacles have grown, and his body is less humanoid in shape…spindlier. The heroes decide to take the deal that they have been offered.

They are directed to enter the cabin…the tentacled lumberjack shrieks and thrashes towards them, and they run.

Inside the cabin, the creature/man from the window is sitting in one of the chairs beneath the light contraption; he appears to be dead. The flesh around his eyes is ravaged-fresh and old wounds surround the sockets. The eyes are black with the barest ring of white around them…they appear to be too large for his head. The eyes twitch as if registering the presence of the three humans in the room.

Clara looks at the figure on the table…but it isn’t a figure at all…it’s a circle made of some kind of black stome…shaped like a whirlpool or vortex. She can almost make out arms and fingers…and three toothed orifices (mouths?) in the ‘eye’ of the storm. She reaches out and touches it.

“The devouring wind,” says the not-so-dead creature. “That is teh being that is now dead.”
Troys asks how long has it been dead? A: We believe that trying to explain time you are like us. We exist outside time. You have been severed. We do not remember you.

Doug asks how it doesn’t remember us, yet asked which one are you, which doesn’t make sense. The creature goes on to explain that our heroes are outside time, there are no other like them. Troy was like others and then became like Clara, Douglas, and Marion. Tells them that the creature that took Mariom was a Hound of Tindalos, and that wherever she is, she will be returned to us on the train. It also tells them that its eyes belonged to a dolphin.

The air is rent by a high-pitched sound like the scream of a panicked horse, followed by thrashing sounds. The creature tells our heroes to leave…go back to the train.

They run back to their cabin to grab their things. Through the window they see a creature made of horse bits bearing down on Stanley. They leave the cabin and run out to run around him and the beast. The last thing they hear from him is a wet noise and gunshots.

They take off towards the lumber camp, but Troy freaks out and takes off in the wrong direction. Clara and Douglas chase him…Clara sees something in the woods moving in to intercept Troy…it is a simian form that clearly used to be human. She calls out to Troy to make him stop. The ape-thing attacks, Troy and Douglas shoot and kill it.

Clara searches the remains…finds a picture of a man with a little girl and an older woman.

They head towards the camp. About two minutes in, they stop hearing horse screams but the crashing sounds continue.

They make it to a cleared area beside a large creek, and follow it towards the camp. On the way, they find the corpse of an outdoorsy-looking man, his body against a stump, his severed arm and the axe that removed it remain on the stump itself. Clara’s inspection of the body reveal that he died from impact to chest and sternum. His wallet is still in his pocket, along with chew, dice, $4.00, and check stubs with the payee name of James Painter.

Finally they arrive in the camp. It is deserted. They cross the rope bridge to the store and Troy takes out the bridge.

The stables have been smashed…the doors are gone. The far end of the horse pen is also smashed out. There’s blood and bits of horse all over the place.

The house attached to the store…porch is destroyed…the store is empty…the doors are open on all the buildings except the store. They loot the place, then head towards the train. Clara goes ahead of the other two…Troy and Douglas take out a two-person-corpse creature on the other bridge.

In the passenger car, Clara sees a figure seated at the back for a moment, and then it’s gone…the face is her own. The expression of surprise is hers, too. More severe looking, but clearly this is some other Clara. Clara feels that there were others, but that they’re gone now. She feels that same feeling she experienced when she used the talking board at Eugenia’s…the light has that odd quality…but then everything goes back to ‘normal.’

Marion is sprawled on the floor, injured and unconscious…no worse off than before her abduction, albeit paler. Troy and Douglas try to start the train so that they can leave, but it doesn’t work out. They end up spending the night in the engine because it’s the most defensible spot. It’s a long and sleepless night…they keep hearing the thrashing sounds, sometimes close, sometimes farther away, and strange shrieks punctuate the dark hours.

Our group meets up for an early breakfast before catching the train to Skookum Lake.

It is a dreary, rainy day as we make our way to the train. A man in work clothes stands under the passenger car overhang, smoking a cigarette and trying to stay dry. It turns out that he’s the engineer. He lets us into the passenger car; it’s not luxurious like the one that we took to New Mexico. It’s a more utilitarian version, meant for the workers.

The journey is about 15 miles, roughly an hour’s ride. This isn’t a day trip. This train will most likely not return to Tillamook for several days.

About 15 minutes into our journey, Marian asks if we smell something…her voice is muffled..everything is muffled. In the seat next to her are the sickles…the sack is smoking. Marian looks around, opens the sack…her face is illuminated by their glow. she grabs one. The rest of us see the ‘shadows’ collect in all the corners of the car. It’s more like the edges of the car are being pulled away somehow.

Douglas pulls a penny from his pocket and throws it at the ceiling edge…it bounces off as if the corner is still solid, yet it leaves an after-image in the darkness. Something comes through the space…another flat, projected thing, a creature, paile blue, vulpine, with spindly appendages and spiky, protruding joints. It strikes.

Overcome by the sudden appearance of the monster, Troy loses his mind a little. Clara, Marian, and Douglas somehow manage to keep their panic in check.

The creature lunges at Douglas, who tries to dodge away…he isn’t fast enough and it claws him.

Marian attacks it with a sickle. She swings at the wall. the creature turns and raises one of its appendages. There is no apparent contact between it and her, and yet it somehow moves her arm aside. She falls back, which actually saves her from being injured.

Troy goes after it with the other sickle. He connects, hitting it pretty solidly. There’s a sickly blue flash, and the image of the creature appears to be wounded.

Douglas attempts to shoot it. There is a muffled pop when the gun discharges. The window shatters…rain comes in, making the floor slick.

Clara picks up a coffee urn and hurls it at the creature. It hits the back of one of the seats and careens off, rolling down the aisle and spewing hot coffee everywhere.

Troy hits the monster again with the sickle and deals it a gash to the face.

Marian swings and misses.

Clara shoots her gun at it…she thinks she hits it, but there is no blue streak; there’s no shattered window either.

The creature moves up the wall to the ceiling. It attacks Mariam from above and she drops her sickle. She turns white, freezes, then disappears like mist. An image of her reappears behind the creature, receding into the distance like the projected image on the wall of Mulligan’s hotel room.

Clara goes into a frenzy at this, and hits the creature with the sickle that Marian dropped. It goes after her but she manages to dart out of its way between rows of seats.

Douglas slips on the coffee urn and shoots wild.

The monsters runs through Clara, leaving ragged tattered flesh in its wake. It skids to a halt near the broken window.

Troy attacks it again with his sickle. Something falls off….it limps and thrashes angrily.

Douglas shoots at it again, but the shot goes wide, leaving a hole in the wall.

Clara tries to attack, but has nearly no strength due to her own injury, and is unable to hurt it.

Troy takes it down with the sickle. Blue and yellow ichor spray from it’s wounds…the image shatters.

Douglas and Clara patch themselves up.

The encampment is pretty much what you would expect: there’s a company store, sleeping quarters, and dining hall, as well as a turnaround for the train.

We disembark without the engineer seeing the damage to the car or the fact that Marian’s missing.

We talk to the foremand, Anthony Boyd, giving the story that we’re here to do an article about Skookum Lake. He directs us to the company store for supplies and to get lodgings for Clara.

When we go in, we are greeted by the proprietor. After some conversation about the area, we are told that there are three hunting lodges a small distance away. One is already occupied (by Mulligan and co), but the other two available for use. We purchase a map and some provisions, then limp to our lodge.

We realize that the information on the back of the photograph of the dolmen actually coincides with map coordinates for a location south of the lake. We decide to investigate.

Passing the lodge that Mulligan is using, we see smoke coming from the chimney. There is also a dome-like (geodesic) structure out front which reminds us of the smoke lodge at Gatineau’s place in Forest Grove.

Further on, we hear voices and stop. Troy ventures forward on his own. He sees Mulligan digging a huge pit. The man in sunglasses stands above him, smoking. Another man in sunglasses stands near the prone figure of a man who has been tied to a rock. His face is turned away, but as he struggles, his face comes into view, or rather, what should be his face…it is a mass of tentacles. As Troy looks on in mute horror, a tentacle stretches from the ruins of the man’s face, reaching out and probing the surface of the rock.

Troy sneaks away and returns to the rest of us safely, recounting what he had seen.

While Douglas is at the diner waiting for the order, he notices some sharp-dressed men in a booth. They stand out from the other patrons of the crowded restaurant. Judging from the state of the table, they’ve been there a while. The rest of the diners are studiously ignoring them, possibly in hopes that they’ll go away. Douglas doesn’t recognize any of the men. One of them gives him a long look over the top of his newspaper, but quickly dismisses him. A young man that Douglas remembers from the hotel enters, shakes the rain off his hat, and joins the men in the booth.

After getting the food and returning to the hotel, Douglas tells the rest of the crew about the men in the diner; upon comparing notes, they figure that the young man Douglas recognized is Charles, the same man who solicited Marion, Mulligan’s henchman.

Now that they know Charles is out of the way, they decide to check out Mulligan’s room. Troy successfully picks the lock withoutdamaging it; he looks inside and points out something strange: the room looks fairly normal, except for a bizarre chandelier next to the wardrobe. Marion thinks at first that it’s a piece of surreal art…it consists of coat hangers and electrical wiring (still in its cotton insulation) that has been shaped into a rough ovoid. It is dotted with small lightbulbs, and five vacuum tubes are suspended behind it. In the center, a snowglobe of what appears to be the Washington Monument hangs upside down.

Troy head out into the hallway to keep watch in case Charles or one of the other gangsters comes back from the diner unexpectedly.

Marion hears a high-pitched, almost imperceptible tone. Nobody else hears it…she assumes it comes from the chandelier. Douglas and Clara enter the room and inspect the chandelier more closely. Douglas ascertains that it is indeed a snowglobe of the Washington Monument. The ‘snow’ is hovering around the tip of the monument. Now Douglas and Clara both think they can hear the tone that Marion heard. They also notice small pieces of some kind of machinery hanging behind the contraption.

A search of the rest of the room turns up (for Douglas): an ashtray with several Galois cigarrettes, as well as two hand-rolled butts which smell like the ones from Gatineau and the apartment building in Bay City. clara collects oe of the butts. She then checks the wastebasket and finds a crumpled note. It smells like fish.

The note reads:
Mr Milligan (sic) Sir

These were all I could get from the last catch. I know it is not as much as you wanted so I also return half of the money which I hope you will find fair.

The men think it is distastefull (sic) keeping them so it is a hardship to convence (sic) them otherwise. I have a plan though and all I need from you is two or three days and I should have everyone in line. Best regards.
—R

Also in the wastebasket are three pieces of brown wrapping paper, with Corrigan’s Ice Block printed on them. They are damp but do not smell fishy.

Douglas opens the bedside table and finds a pocket bible, a folded piee of paper, a photograph, and a scrawled chalk symbol. As he looks at the chalk symbol, the chandelier lights up for a moment and the sound gets louder. The vacuum tubes glow ultramarine blue,the small bulbs light up, and the snow in the globe spreads out.

Douglas and Clara look at each other…both see on the wall by the bed a picture of the room in which they are standing…like a still from a movie projector…it shows Clara inspecting the trash and Douglas looking in the side table. The colors are lurid—-shocking. Half a second later, the picture slides up the wall and disappears where the wall and ceiling connect. The chandelier goes dark and the humming stops. The smell of hot electical wiring permeates the room.

Douglas looks back to the symbol with the intention of copying it for Marion, only to find that it in now a blackened spot in the drawer, similar to the mark left by a burning cigarette. He attempts to recreate the symbol from memory, but isn’t very confident that he has it right. He shows it to Marion, explaining what happened at the same time.
Marion can tell right away that Douglas’ reproduction of the symbol is inaccurate. However, it does look somewhat similar to something she remembers described in the Azure Crown…and that it is basically and occult signal flare of sorts.

The photograph in the drawer appears to be of a man-made cave or open cairn…it brings back the mention of a dolmen during the talking board session. They decide to pocket the picture. On the back is written the following:
Worth?
45/22/16
-123/42/12
The numbers are preceded by a symbol resembling an uppercase cursive L.

Also in the drawer is a bill of sale for Kellerman’s General Provisioners. The list consists of 4 shovels, 4 flashlights, 6 toothbrushes, 6 suit brushes, 3 garden spades, and 5 oilcloth sacks.

Troy alerts them that Charles and a dark-haired man with a pencil mustache are exiting the diner….the two men can be seen standing under an awning in the rain, holding a surreptitious conversation while darting furtive glances back at the diner.

Our heroes close the room back up and leave, acting like nothing is amiss. Troy relocks the door just as the hotel door opens below and Charles and his companion enter.

The group passes the men on the stairs. Charles greets Marion, but the mustached man pushes past, barking at Charles to follow.

Troy peers back around the top of the stairs and watches as Charles and the other man go into Charles’ room.

Marion inspects the photograph further and recognizes the symbols as being British pounds sterling. The second entry is negative…what does this mean? There’s no total. The group is mystified.

They spend the afternoon playing cards in the lounge. Around 6 in the evening, Charles and his budy leave. They’re all business…Charles doesn’t even acknowled Marion. The men can be seen going into the Diner…and then the group of men from the booth file out and get into their fancy cars, heading off in the direction of Bay City.

The group decides to follow. Douglas is at the wheel. It is raining…a steady, heavy downpour. Douglas swerves to miss a crumpled mass in the road, skids, bumps the thing and goes oof the road. Nobody is hurt…the group ventures out to inspect the thing in the road and find that it is a man. They recognize him as one of the men from the diner…the one who had scoped Douglas out over his newspaper. It appears that our group drove over his legs.

Clara ascertains that he is dead. His neck has bee broken and he has some kind of blunt trauma injury to the back of his head. There are also bruises around his neck, as if someone had throttled him. Checking his pockets, they find a wallet…the drivers license identifies him as Emmet Kline there’s also a large wad of money and a folded picture of four men. One of the men in the pic is circles. The circled man is Mulligan. The photo is of a street scene. The two men with their arms around each other’s shoulders are Marty and Johnny Smith, both of whom were killed in the cemetery standoff. Nobody recognizes the fouth man, but he looks like a mobster, too.

They pocket the cash, the pic, and a cigarette case (the contents appear to be normal cigarettes, not the special Gatineau variety). They decide to return to the hotel instead of following the killers.

Charles doesn’t show up for his ‘bible study’ with Marion. They decide to retire for the night.

Around 2:30 AM, Troy, Douglas, and Clara awaken from a fitful sleep. They hear that high-pitched sound again. They spend the remainder of the night pacing, going out in the hall, smoking. The fancy cars are still missing.

When they meet up for breakfast, they discuss what happened in the small hours of the morning…and the three of them realize that the shadows in the corners had been much darker than they should have been…just like the tunnels under Portland.